


collecting strays

by girlsarewolves



Series: bi bi kitty [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games), Batman: Arkham - All Media Types, Catwoman - All Media Types
Genre: Bisexual Female Character, Canon Bisexual Character, F/F, F/M, Femslash, Grief/Mourning, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mild Sexual Content, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 07:38:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18069308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/pseuds/girlsarewolves
Summary: Selina has a problem with strays - namely that they keep showing up at her home.





	collecting strays

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crookedspoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/gifts).



> For spoon, who writes me gifts that I take FOREVER to read and/or comment on!

* * *

Selina has a problem with strays.

 

It started with Harley. The said clown kept showing up at all the worst times, and somehow they'd wound up drinking pals and fuckbuddies. Empty fucking and grief - that's all it is between them, though. Meaningless sex and commiserating - cause misery loves company, and Harley can't stand to be alone.

 

Selina should kick her out. The last thing she ever wants is listen to the copious amounts of bullshit Quinn has made up about the Joker to help her deal with the fact that she's still grieving an abusive piece of shit - she and Ivy might not have been on the best of terms, but at least Ivy respected her lover and had a reason to her schemes, instead of just some sick obsession with Batman and chaos and death.

 

But every time Harley shows up on the fire escape outside her apartment, Selina winds up letting her in - like some lost and damp stray cat that found its way to her. 

 

At first it had just been drinks and letting Harley go on and on about her two lovers, now gone forever. Eventually she had managed to coax Selina into talking, too - talking about Ivy. Talking about Batman - _Bruce_. That had never been the plan, in fact it was the last thing Selina intended on doing around Harley - but Quinn still had the mind of a psychiatrist in that crazy head of hers. 

 

Selina has a suspicion that tricking her into confiding in Harley and letting her play grief counselor was part of clown girl's own therapy. 

 

But Harley's also a bad psychiatrist in many ways, and eventually they wound up half-naked on the bed, hands down each other's panties. They'd made each other scream a few times before finally passing out in a sweaty tangle of limbs, only to then shower and have breakfast and commiserate on their lost loves yet again. Like it was to reassure themselves and each other what had happened didn't mean anything, it was just getting a fix. Letting out some steam.

 

It keeps happening.

 

At this point Selina doesn't even pretend to consider the prospect of turning Harley down, because this new grief turned her softer instead of harder, and she keeps letting Harley in. She lets her in deeper and deeper every time, to the point that she isn't so sure it's just empty fucking and grief between them now. Not that she'd ever be so reckless to admit such a thing. She might have gone soft, but she's not that soft.

 

It was only a few months after when another stray wandered to her door - this time the new, gun happy vigilante that Harley had let slip used to be the Arkham Knight, that she also let slip the name of - Jason Todd, long thought deceased ward of Bruce Wayne and a former Robin. Harley just keeps collecting Reds for herself.

 

"If you're looking for Harley, she's not here," Selina had said after opening the door to look the red helmet in the blank face, figuring he was just chasing down his partner - who, she suspected at the time to later find out she was right on the money, Harley was also using for sex and therapy. She still doesn't get that particular hook up, to be honest, but then they're all good and screwed up, aren't they? 

 

Gotham does that to its strays.

 

"Not here for her. Just here for a beer. Harley says you keep stocked."

 

"Only if you take that stupid thing off. No masks allowed inside." A new rule she made up on the spot, but she sticks to it, appreciates that illusion of some kind of order, some kind of sanctity, that it gives to her home, to these weird and supposedly meaningless hook ups and hang outs. 

 

A pause, and then he'd taken the thing off, exposing a dark-haired, lost boy - and it struck her, then, how Bruce kept taking in strays that looked like they really could be his - with a J branded to his cheek and a haunted look in his eyes. "We never really met before. When I was...with Batman. I'm Jason." 

 

"I know. Harley told me." She'd stepped to the side, door open, but Jason had hung back for a moment, looking around and despite his height, his size, the weight of everything etched into his face, obvious in his eyes, he looked like a little kid who couldn't find their way home. She supposed that maybe that's exactly what he was. "Batman...Bruce...he almost lost it for a while when you went missing. A lot of us didn't know what was going on at the time, but..." She trailed off there, not sure she was doing or trying to say.

 

In the end he'd just nodded and come in. They drank in silence, neither one able to come up with a way to start a conversation, or maybe they just hadn't wanted to talk and didn't want to try and prompt the other to either. He'd left an hour later.

 

Sometimes he and Harley show up at the same time. Sometimes one after the other. They're wrecks, the three of them - all mourning people and pretending they aren't, except sometimes Harley, and trying to convince each other and themselves they have a life outside of masks and violence. They play at being friends or lovers - though Selina keeps up a boundary between herself and Jason, unwilling to cross that line just because they're both fooling around with the same clown. 

 

"She's a screamer, isn't she?" he asks one night when she comes out of the bedroom, Harley draped over the bed behind her, half asleep after their fucking.

 

"Nope, not having this conversation with you," Selina replies, padding into the kitchen - grateful she tossed an oversized t-shirt on that actually comes to her mid-thighs. This whole situation is weird, and she doesn't want it getting weirder.

 

"Is it because I was Robin?"

 

 _No, it's because I'm still in love with your dead father - and we both know he was your father, the both of you believed that, deep down, no matter how much you try to deny it._ The words come to her easily, but they don't come out. She has a harder time talking about Bruce with Jason - something about the both of them feeling his loss makes it more painful, more difficult to get through. It hits her then that it's been over a year since Bruce was outed as Batman, since the explosion that took out Wayne Manor and its two occupants. She realizes that must make it worse for him - Jason lost Bruce and Alfred, the two people to love him and take him in and mourn him when they thought he died.

 

She knows there's Barbara, too - Batgirl, Oracle - and maybe Dick, but Jason and Dick had never had much chance to bond before Joker nabbed himself a bird. And Tim, well, Tim was the replacement. She's not sure if they've even talked at all.

 

"No. It's because I'm not interested, and as much as Harley likes being shared, I don't think she's interested in sharing you," Selina settles with instead - technically, it's all true. It's just not the real reasons why.

 

Jason snorts, softly, and takes a swig of the beer he obviously helped himself to. "Yeah. It's...interesting."

 

"No judgment here," Selina tells him, voice softer. "I get it. I mean, I really don't, but it's not my business. If it's how you cope, it's how you cope. In this city, getting by can be a fucked up business."

 

He looks at her for a long moment, like he's seeing her, really seeing Selina and not Catwoman without a mask who lets people just come over whenever they want and hang out and drink her dry. "He loved you, you know. Wouldn't say it. Stubborn bastard. But we knew it - Babs and me, and Dick too from what she said. Alfred even. I think sometimes he was scared of it. Back then I didn't because really - he was Batman. Obviously he wasn't scared of anything. Now I know better. Now I can look back and see. Maybe he was right to be. If you two had been closer, you might have been in the mansion that night too."

 

"Don't," she interjects. "Let's not go there." She doesn't want to think about what might have happened differently - because if they'd been closer, maybe she could have helped him long before that night. "Besides. Bruce loved a lot of women. Batman did too."

 

Jason laughs at that. "Yeah. I guess you're right. That whole player thing wasn't completely an act."

 

Selina laughs a little herself, because why not have a laugh at the expense of the dead? The dead are gone, leaving everyone that loved them behind with their grief. A little laughter does everyone good.

 

Harley joins them not long after, awakened by the sound of mirth, and they share stories of those loved and lost that said loved ones would mightily object to being told. And they laugh at their ghosts, pretending that it doesn't hurt.

 

The next day, Dick Grayson shows up, with a box of belongings found that he thinks Bruce would want her to have and a shy, tentative, "You let in other former Robins?"

 

Selina has a real problem with strays.

* * *

 


End file.
